The Face of Heaven (52 page)

She hugged and kissed him. “Oh, thank you. Corinth King, you are so strong and such a good walker.” Then she kissed Lincoln and held her close. “And you, my darling, I’ve never seen such a beautiful girl anywhere in my whole life. It looks like you’ve been on your feet for weeks.”

Lincoln held a slightly crumpled card out to her.

“What now? My heart is full already.”

Holding them to her she opened the card while everyone watched.

After reading Grant’s words about his gift Lyndel leaped up, a child in each arm, still clutching the note. “Where is he? Where is the colt?” She stared directly at her husband, who hadn’t moved from his seat in the carriage, and tried to look fierce. “You knew all about this and said nothing?”

Nathaniel grinned and raised his hand to heaven. “Birthdays are for surprises, not proclamations.”

“Come to the paddock behind our stable,” laughed her father. “Come, come, bring young Corinth and Lincoln. The colt is waiting for you.”

“Does it have a name, Papa?”

“Adam named the animals. You will have to name yours.”

Lyndel half-ran to the Keim stable across the road, carrying her two children, greeting everyone as she hurried past. Most of the crowd left the cake and the food to follow, several women draping the heavily laden tables with sheets to keep off the flies.

Smiling, Nathaniel climbed down from the carriage and headed for the stable. There was no one else around so he lifted a corner of a sheet, scooped some icing onto his finger, and placed it in his mouth. Lyndel’s shriek of delight upon seeing the colt, when it came, was so loud he was sure they could hear it all the way in the next county. He dropped the sheet back over her birthday cake and began to walk toward the Keim
stables. He was certain she would have named the colt by the time he got there, and that it would be a good name that meant something—even if it might be different than one any other Amish horse had ever carried from the time their people had come to America.

E
PILOGUE

L
yndel always ended her story with the naming of the colt “Galatia”—after what she considered was the cry of freedom in the Bible, the letter to the Galatians that Paul had written. Once her listeners left she sat and rocked while Nathaniel wound the clock and made tea. They would each drink a cup and he would tease her that she told the story differently each time—and that she always skipped something. What about how the other Amish communities looked down on her father for permitting soldiers to return to his church? How about the visit by Grant when he was President to see how Galatia, Cincinnati’s colt, was faring as a full-grown mare? Why didn’t she spend more time on their honeymoon in New York City? Then he would kiss the top of her head, play with a loose strand of hair that still had some red in it, and tell her to come to bed—he had many horses to shoe in the morning and needed a good night’s rest.

“In a minute,” she would always respond.

She didn’t tell the story often. The Amish community didn’t want to hear about the war, so the only ones who were interested were people from town or other counties.

All her children had listened to the story again and again. And every time Lyndel spoke about those years it stirred her own feelings and memories and lit a small fire inside.

When Nathaniel would leave her alone with the lamp afterward she would take down the plain wooden box from the mantel of the fireplace, a box that few noticed. Inside was his medal of honor, with its stars-and-stripes ribbon, its eagle, and its five-pointed star, which Abraham Lincoln had fastened to her husband’s chest after Gettysburg. There was a slip of paper that spoke of his courage and gallantry in rallying his men at Seminary Ridge. A large gold button from a Union general’s uniform also lay in the box. On its back was etched her name and the title
Nurse of the Army of the Potomac.
It had been presented to her after Petersburg. Another piece of paper had written on it the men of Nathaniel’s company and platoon. Of course there was the pass to the battle lines that was written in President Lincoln’s own hand. And
underneath everything was a small envelope. Inside were the wedding rings Moses Gunnison had given them.

The Amish didn’t wear wedding bands of any kind. Once they returned to the Amish community in Elizabethtown, Nathaniel and Lyndel had removed them. But the rings meant too much to hide away forever. So Nathaniel had built the box from wood he’d journeyed to Belle Plain to retrieve—in the fall of 1865—part of the log cabin that had been their first home was still standing—and into the box went their keepsakes from a war that had changed their country and changed their own lives and souls.

Lyndel would wear her ring again for a few minutes and turn Nathaniel’s over in her hand in the lamplight. She would pray. She would thank God for all that had been, the hardships as well as the times of joy. She would remember that Moses’ mother and father had worn the rings and defied the chains of men with their love.

Then in the quiet of her home she would speak softly the words from Galatians that Nathaniel had freely translated from Martin Luther’s German, trying to get, he told her, not just the phrasing but the depth, the emotion, the force. It was these words they had spoken over Charlie’s grave the day the war had ended, a soft rain on her shoulders and the shoulders of Nathaniel, Levi, Ham, and Joshua, the sun just beginning to make its way through the high pillars of cloud.

Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free. Stand, I say, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. It is for this freedom that Christ has died. Do not lose it. Do not spurn it. Hold it to you, body and soul. For it is the gift of God to you through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Forever.

A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS

H
istorical fiction stands on two feet—the historical is about
what was
and the fiction is about
what might have been
. In order for
what might have been
to work well and tell a good story,
what was
must be as accurate and authentic as possible. For this I am grateful to my terrific editor at Harvest House, Nick Harrison, for his advice, insight, and support. I also wish to extend my thanks to those American Civil War scholars, living and dead, whose research has helped me to make
The Face of Heaven
as realistic and true-to-life as possible: Bruce Catton, Craig L. Dunn, Ernest B. Ferguson, Shelby Foote, Alan D. Gaff, Gary W. Gallagher, Warren W. Hassler Jr., Lance J. Herdegen, James O. Lehman, James M. McPherson, Mark E. Neely Jr., Alan T. Nolan, Steven M. Nolt, Stephen B. Oates, Stephen W. Sears, John Selby, Brooks D. Simpson, and Noah Andre Trudeau. I am also grateful for the published letters, journals, and diaries of the soldiers, surgeons, and nurses who lived and often died during that conflict.
Requiescat in pace.

A
BOUT
M
URRAY
P
URA
…

M
urray Pura earned his Master of Divinity degree from Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, and his ThM degree in theology and interdisciplinary studies from Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia. For more than twenty-five years, in addition to his writing, he has pastored churches in Nova Scotia, British Columbia, and Alberta. Murray’s writings have been short-listed for the Dartmouth Book Award, the John Spencer Hill Literary Award, the Paraclete Fiction Award, and Toronto’s Kobzar Literary Award. Murray pastors and writes in southern Alberta near the Rocky Mountains. He and his wife, Linda, have a son and a daughter.

Visit Murray’s website at
www.murraypura.com
.

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harvesthousepublishers.com
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